Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.
JAMES BALDWINThe victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he or she has become a threat.
More James Baldwin Quotes
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It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
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It’s a miracle to realize that somebody loves you.
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There is a fearful splendor in absolute desolation.
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American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.
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The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
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People are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted.
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All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it.
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You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at all.
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Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.
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True rebels after all, are as rare as true lovers,and in both cases, to mistake a fever for passion can destroy one’s life.
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I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.
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The world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare.
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Hatred is always self hatred, and there is something suicidal about it.
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You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back.
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The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world’s definitions.
JAMES BALDWIN